(Shopian) Jammu and Kashmir, India

Effect of Mughal Road on Land Use of Catchment Area of Rambiara Nallah (Shopian) Jammu and Kashmir, India

Fayaz Ahmad Bhat*, Suheel Ahmad Dar and Rifat Ara Wani Department of Environmental Sciences/Centre of Research for Development (CORD), University of Kashmir, India Submission: July 24, 2017; Published: August 07, 2017 *Corresponding author: Fayaz Ahmad Bhat, Department of Environmental Sciences/Centre of Research for Development (CORD), University of Kashmir, India, Email:

Abstract The present study analyzes the effect of Mughal road on dynamics of land use/land cover using geospatial techniques of remote sensing and GIS on catchment area of Rambiara Nallah in Hirpora (Shopian) Jammu and Kashmir. During the 20 years time period, dense forest has shown an unprecedented decrease of about 17.82 percent while scrub land increases about 43.31 percent, have caused a tremendous land use change

because of construction of the famous mughal road. This huge deforestation leads to increasing emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere which in turn leads to climate change. Road effects take place in the contexts of environmental settings, their history, and the state of engineering practices, and must be evaluated in those contexts for best management approaches.

Keywords: Land use; Land cover; Remote sensing; Catchment; Forest; Mughal road

Introduction Land cover is also used to describe different natural habitats, 588 km to 126 km. It makes for alternate road route to Kashmir deserts, forests, woodlands, glaciers and water bodies as well The distance between Srinagar and Poonch will be reduced from valley from rest of India. Forest roads are the most costly as habitats manipulated by man [1]. Though humans have been modifying land to obtain food and other essentials for thousands can cause severe environmental impacts including road surface of years, current rates extends and intensities of land use and structures in forestry. Inefficiently constructed forest roads erosion and sediment yield [3], pollution of waters, direct loss land cover change are far greater than ever in history, driving unprecedented changes in ecosystem and environmental surface [4] and indirect loss of habitat by the fragmentation of of habitat by conversion of artificial land cover into an artificial an ecosystem into smaller and more isolated patches [5]. Large changes encompass the greatest environmental concerns of modification at local, regional and global scales [2]. These areas of forest are destroyed during road construction which human populations today, including climate change, biodiversity not only results in economic losses, but changes the conditions loss and the pollution of water, soil and air. of the environment [6]. The anthropogenic activities, such as The loss of tropical forests is a global concern because of its impact on biodiversity and climate. Roads are viewed as having deforestation, forest degradation, forest fire and burning of fossil precipitated much of this loss by opening forest areas to logging gases [7]. The CO concentration in atmosphere increased fuel are playing a significant2 role in producing the greenhouse and agricultural conversion. This view poses a dilemma: road from 280 ppm at the beginning of the industrial revolution construction has traditionally been one of the most important to present levels of 400 ppm. Road effects take place in the tools for rural development but they also facilitate deforestation. contexts of environmental settings, their history, and the state of engineering practices, and must be evaluated in those contexts district to Shopian district in the Kashmir valley. The road is 84 km for best management approaches. Mughal road is the road between Bafliaz, a town in the Poonch Remote sensing plays an important role in generating of 3505 m that is higher than Banihal pass. The road brings the long and passes over the Pir Panjal mountain range, at an altitude information about the latest land use land cover pattern in an area

Poonch and Rajouri district closer to Srinagar in Kashmir valley.

Agri Res & Tech: Open Access J 9(2): ARTOAJ.MS.ID.555760 (2017) 0061 Agricultural Research & Technology: Open Access Journal and its temporal changes through times. The information being classes .The composition and distribution of land use/land cover in digital form can be brought under geographical information types of images included: dense forest, sparse forest, scrub land, system (GIS) to provide suitable platform for data analysis, pasture land, waste land, and water bodies. The land use/ land update and retrieval. The study focuses on the effectiveness of cover map shows the spatial and temporal variation in the area satellite data for land use/land cover change of the study area which is shown in Figure 2. due to the construction of a famous mughal road. Materials and Methodology Study area The study area lies at an altitude of 2546 m above the mean sea level within geographical coordinates of 33° 39’55”N and 74° 39’ 40”E (Figure 1). The study area is located at the bank of Rambiara Nallah, within the heart of Hirpora wildlife sanctuary. The climatic conditions of the study area are somehow different from Kashmir valley. The highest day temperature is about 25°C in summers and the winters are having subzero temperature with heavy snowfall. It is one of the most beautiful and unexplored area of Shopian, Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir. Figure 2: Satellite images shows land use/land cover maps.

Figure 3: Land use/land covers percentage change.

During the present study it has been found that the dense forests and sparse forests have shown a decreasing trend Figure 1: Outline map of study area. of about 17.82 percent and 14.94 percent of the total area

Database and methodology due to natural factors, population pressure and increasing respectively (figure 3).This decrease in the forest area is mainly The procedure adopted for deriving statistics of land use demands of people for timber, fuel wood, land for settlement, land cover. Two different dates of Satellite imagery i.e. IRS-IC roads (Mughal road), agriculture etc have lead to declining of LISS III with 23.5 meter resolution acquired on 25 October 2010 the forest area [8-9]. Waste lands as well as pasture lands were and LAND SAT TM data of 25 October 1990 were used as source showing increasing trend after the construction of mughal road. This increase is due to the conversion of forest land into waste land by the way of deforestation [10]. The present study data. The scheme adopted for land use/land cover classification sensed data was geometrically corrected using topo sheets also reveals that scrub land has shown a noticeable increase is the level I and II of NRSA with local modification. The remotely as references. After the ground truthing and development of from 14.33% in 1990 to 43.31% in 2010 respectively, which interpretation key, the images were visually analyzed on screen contributes about an increase of 28.98% from last two decades. and the various classes of land use/land cover were delineated. This increase may be at the cost of decrease of forest cover due The study area was accordingly divided into six land use classes. to construction of mughal road, tourism [11]. Water bodies have During the computation of change detection of area under Land also shown an alarming decrease from 11 ha in 1990 to 5 ha in use/ land cover categories, the percentage change of the total 2010 respectively. This decreasing area of the water bodies may area was calculated , which is the change of area of a particular be due to land transformations [12]. category divided by total area of catachment multiplied by 100. Conclusion Results and Discussion degradation of dense forests, decrease in water bodies, increase in The key finding of the present study includes the immense on screen digitization technique into 06 land use/ land cover pasture land and scrub land. These changes have clearly depicted In the present study, the Study area was classified using

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How to cite this article: Fayaz A B, Suheel A D, Bashir A G.Effect of Mughal Road on Land Use of Catchment Area of Rambiara Nallah (Shopian) Jammu 0063 and Kashmir, India. Agri Res & Tech: Open Access J. 2017; 9(2): 555760. DOI: 10.19080/ARTOAJ.2017.09.555760.